Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  Then he saw the two people seating themselves on the steps of the staircase leading up to the first terrace in the playground.

  Then he saw the man who had stopped in front of the open vault door step right into the vault itself. Then he saw the man with the Coke put the Coke down, kneel beside the sled, lift a package, call something out and hand the package up to the man standing inside the vault.

  The flashlight beamed on and off. It beamed on and off a second time—completed a signal which meant that the vault was still open, that the armed theft should proceed.

  Costa glanced down and noticed the truck was still backing up and pulling forward on Prince Street. And for the first time he noticed that the drizzle had stopped. He trained his binoculars on the dark window, saw what he thought were moving shadows at the second large window.

  Six pairs of rubbers and one pair of soft-soled shoes stole single file past the double lines of desks in the counting room. Seven bulky figures—ranging in height from five seven to six one—each with a gun in one gloved hand and with his bulbous rubber-covered head held cautiously upright so as not to disrupt vision or upset the cap and make noise, trailed gingerly on behind the third and final window of the counting room.

  Geagan led the column, heard voices coming from beyond the partially opened Dutch doors ahead, voices calling out numbers. He raised his gun hand in the dark without looking back, assumed that the six behind him would slow, reached out cautiously with his other hand. Chamois-covered fingers coaxed the top partition of the open Dutch door farther open, lowered, eased the bottom section wider open. The bottom section creaked, not loud, but audibly. The voices beyond stopped. The gloved hand raised in a warning of caution.

  Costa peered hard through the binoculars, saw the cluster of shadows at a standstill behind the third window. Nothing was noted in the fourth and unlit window. The light remained on in the fifth window. The vault remained open, but now no one was inside. The man with the shoulder holster stood to the right of the door, stretching. The man beside him was looking down at a piece of paper or book. Another man was coming over to join them. The man without glasses was standing on the left side of the room, standing just behind the grillwork wall, standing next to the small table which held a telephone, standing right beside a pull-down alarm.

  The head of the man without glasses was bowed and turned slightly to the side as if he were thinking about something or listening to something. Then he looked up, stared through the grillwork and on out the window over the playground, gazed off in the direction of the roof from which Costa was watching him. The man without glasses seemed to be saying something. He looked down at his wrist. The man with the shoulder holster turned and knelt before the open vault door. The two men to his right turned away from the window and looked down at a table. The man without glasses turned and walked from the grillwork, then stopped.

  Costa saw the shadows behind the third window begin moving into the semidarkness behind the fourth window. He saw the fifth man in the vault room walk toward the rear and disappear to the left. That was all right. He was probably going into the control room, and Costa was confident that two of the gunmen were already moving around back through the check-in room to intercept him should he not return or return at the wrong moment.

  A gloved hand raised in the semidarkness of the payroll wrapping room. A rubber face turned, saw other rubber faces backing up behind it. A gloved finger came down and pressed against the thick immobile mouth, then rose again. The rubber head turned back to the door leading out of the payroll wrapping room. The gloved hand fell.

  A pea-coated, masked and chauffeur-capped figure in dark trousers strode silently out of the darkness, angled left and stopped at the far end of the slanting, eight-foot-high grille barrier fronting the vault room, poked the barrel of a .38 through the wide-gauge wire. A second costumed and masked robber appeared from the darkness and fell in to the left of the first, he also pushed a gun nozzle through the grille. A third came forward, stepped in to the left of the second. A fourth moved up to the left of the third. A fifth moved up Then a sixth. Then a seventh.

  There were not-supposed to be seven of them there!

  There were supposed to be only five of them there! Two were supposed to be around behind and coming into the rear of the vault room from the check-in room. Jazz and Sandy realized this almost immediately. So did Mike. But there was nothing anyone could do.

  And all four jacketless Brink’s employees in plain view less than five feet away didn’t see one of them. All four employees either had their backs to the grille or were looking away. All four went right on doing what it was they were doing—tearing slips off money pouches or calling out figures or writing in a ledger.

  And all seven costumed and masked robbers went on standing there in silence with their pistols pointed at the four workers. Jazz was breathing through his mouth and perspiring under his mask, keeping his .45 trained on the employee kneeling in front of the vault and wearing a shoulder holster, shifting his eyes up as high as he could get them on the grille wall, thinking that if all else failed, he could climb over the wall in nothing flat. Sandy was perspiring, hoping he wouldn’t have to fire, and keeping his .32 caliber on someone standing over to the left and glancing beyond at what seemed to be some dozen carts or sleds piled high with tagged packages, maybe more than a dozen, maybe more than twenty or twenty-five—the floor was covered with them. Mike never did perspire easily and never did think about a gun he was pointing, and he was watching the man standing to the left, mentally measuring how far this man was from the stomp alarm in the floor, when he suddenly realized that no one on the crew had ever been designated to do anything at this particular point. He was just about to say something when one of the other robbers spoke up.

  “Okay, boys, put them in the air.”

  All four of the employees looked around, saw the line of bizarre rubber faces topped by chauffeur caps stretched along the grille, saw the guns being held on them. All four employees gawked. One or two paled. One gasped. One said, “Oh, my God.” One of the employees threw his hands high above his head. Two raised theirs more somnambulistically. The fourth man, the one kneeling directly in front of the open vault, the man wearing the shoulder holster, seemed incapable of motion.

  A gun barrel twisted around and wagged at him. “Come on, come on. Get ’em up.”

  The kneeling man raised his hands.

  A fifth employee emerged from the control room in the rear looking as if he were about to say something, gasped instead at the line of gunmen beyond the grille.

  “That’s right, it’s a stickup,” another robber said. “Put them in the air and do what you’re told and no one will get hurt.”

  The fifth employee raised his hands.

  “Get over here and open this gate!”

  Not one of the Brink’s men moved.

  A pistol barrel again twisted around in its wide-gauge wire hole and pointed at the man still on one knee in front of the vault. “You, get over here and open up.”

  “Open up, Charlie,” the only employee without glasses said from the corner of his mouth. “Open it up.”

  Spectacled Charles Grell rose slowly, his arms raised and wide apart and far from his shoulder holster. Then one of his hands seemed to falter, seemed to lower.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Charlie,” cautioned a voice behind a pair of motionless lips, a voice that sounded to Jazz like Gusciora’s. Grell’s arms rose higher. He walked hesitantly forward toward the row of guns and expressionless faces.

  “Okay, Charlie,” a voice that was Jazz’s said softly. “Just take down one arm. Take it down slow.”

  Grell’s hand came down, started for the doors and again seemed to falter.

  “Lift it up and push her back, Charlie.”

  Grell did as he was told.

  Costa saw the grille door slide open, saw the armed robbers bound through, then turned and hurried back across the roof.

  Mike Geagan bolted to the
rear of the vault room and began piling empty baskets up on a counter so that no one passing in front of the garage side of the control room window could see in, while another robber moved up and straddled the stomp alarm button in the floor and still another positioned himself in front of the pull-down alarm next to the phone. Another took Grell’s gun from its holder and, with yet another, herded all five employees to the corner in front of the vault and forced them to lie down—lie facedown with their arms behind their backs. Knotted end rope strands came out from under pea coats and began lashing employees’ wrists together. A roll of tape came out, and strips were torn off and slapped over the mouths of employees. Gloved hands removed the glasses from employees. Sisal bags were already out from under pea coats. Sandy left his lying open on the floor of the vault while he ripped white sheets off brown paper packages on a lower shelf, tore the corners of the packages away to see if there was paper money or checks inside. The first three packages held checks and were pushed away. The next four contained paper currency and were stuffed into the sack. The robber above him and to the rear wasn’t as choosy, he reached across an upper shelf and swept a full armload of tagged packages into a sisal bag. Jazz was kneeling beside a cart just outside the check-in room door, ripping pink sheets off canvas money bags before jamming them into his sack. The masked robber squatting at the next cart was tearing everything off; he tore the receipt sheets and brown paper wrappers and paper Federal Reserve money bands off crisp new bills and stuffed crisp new bills by the gloveful into a sisal bag. The robber at another nearby cart didn’t bother removing anything; he tossed receipt-tagged package after receipt-tagged package into his bag as quickly as possible.

  Costa gazed off to the right and saw two cigarettes glowing on the flight of steps closest to the back of the building across the playground. He lowered his head, picked up his stride and angled across the street. As he passed the cab of the Ford pickup truck, he nodded. The man in the dark beyond the window seemed not to notice; he remained motionless and staring dead ahead. Jimmy slapped on the canvas while making for the rear of the truck. When he stepped around behind the rigging, a white laundry bag was passed out. He bunched the bag under his jacket, walked on up to the black 1949 Chevrolet sedan, got in, pushed the bag under the seat, turned on the ignition, let the motor idle, didn’t turn on the car lights, slid the binoculars and flashlights under the seat, opened the glove compartment door, set the .45 inside and left the compartment door open.

  Geagan knelt and checked out the five employees lying face down in the corner of the vault room floor. Their wrists were lashed tightly together behind their backs—perhaps too tightly. Their legs were securely bound together at the ankles. Mike nodded his approval. The two masked robbers standing over him hurried off. One pulled a sisal bag out from under his pea coat. The other removed a pry bar and made directly for the portable metal GE money box standing farther back in the room. Jazz threw the last of the packages on his cart into the bag, moved for the next cart, was beaten to it by another masked robber, headed for the money baskets on the counter, collided with yet another robber who had the same idea, retreated, hoisted up his bag and stepped around in front of the vault as another robber was backing out the vault door, pulling a bulging and filled sack after him. Once in the vault he found another robber busy at work in the rear and a high front shelf crammed full of packages.

  The light in the sixth window went on—the window to the right of the vault room.

  No one was on the roof at 109 Prince Street to see the light go on. No one on the premises was checking the corner guard booth off the front office to see if anybody was entering the garage—as Pino had ordered. No one in the vault room had talked or was talking and therefore could not give or receive any order, with the exception of Geagan, who every now and then saw something he wanted done and motioned to have it done. No one in the vault room was sure which of the rubber-faced robbers was which with the possible exception of the man trying to pry open the GE box—that was probably Baker. No one in the vault room seemed to be bothering with checking the contents of paper packages anymore. Some tore off yellow or pink or white receipt sheets, some did not. Many were not ignoring bags of smash as they knew they should even without Pino ordering it. Several were dropping bag after heavy bag of coins into their sisal sacks. Almost everyone was perspiring. Everyone was hurrying. No one seemed to know where to leave their big sisal bags once they were filled. Several were left near the open grille door. Several had been dragged as far as the counting room.

  Pino was perspiring under the bows in the darkness of the canvas-covered rear of the truck; he hadn’t stopped perspiring or pacing since Barney had finally come to a stop. He was beginning to mutter to himself while pressing an eye to the side peephole and watching the door at 165, waiting for it to move just a fraction. That was the signal—the door opening just a fraction. “Come on, come on,” he said under his breath. He moved away and paced a little and even hopped up and down a little and went back to the peekhole. “Come on, come on. Get a move on. Get a move on. Pick it up, pick it up.”

  Gloved and sweating hands stuffed canvas money bags into sisal sacks as fast as they could, dumped tray after tray after tray of small payroll envelopes into sisal sacks, tossed in brown paper packages and white paper packages and unwrapped packages of exposed currency and thick brown manila envelopes and thick white manila envelopes and thin envelopes and small cloth pouches, and sometimes white or pink or yellow sheets were torn from packages and tossed away and money baskets were often tossed away and carts were often kicked over, and the floor became so littered that one of the robbers almost tripped over a covered coaster edge and another slipped on a piece of discarded paper. One robber ran out and wedged certain doors with wastepaper baskets. Mike Geagan gave a signal or said something, and Sandy Richardson grabbed a bulging sisal bag and, running backwards, dragged it out of the vault room and through the payroll wrapping room and through the counting room and long corridor and through the front hall and down the first half flight of stairs and down the second half flight and left it inside the metal door opening onto Prince Street and numbered 165. And when he started running back upstairs, he had to get out of the way because two more robbers were running down the stairs, each dragging a sisal bag after him—sisal bags whose wide mouths were left open as they were pulled.

  Activity in the vault room accelerated: More and more payroll envelopes were found and dumped; sacks came off the vault shelf; the robber with the pry bar worked more feverously than ever trying to open the top of the metal GE money box everyone knew held $1,000,000, more open-mouthed filled sisal bags were sped across the office and down the steps on the fleeting heels of backward-running robbers; sweat poured out from under masks, soaked through gloves and socks, made trousers stick to legs; robbers began working in pairs, one holding open a sack while another turned over and dumped out the contents of an entire basket; a second man joined the first, trying to wedge open the top of the GE box and its million-dollar load.

  And the breathing of many of the robbers became pronouncedly heavy and the last full cartload of packages was cleaned off and the last full money basket emptied and the last tray of payroll envelopes dumped out and yet another robber took hold of the bar and tried prying up the lid or breaking the padlock of the metal box and other gray knees dropped to the floor trying to find packages that might have fallen off early and more filled bags were scooted out the grille door behind a bounding dragger and someone went back inside the looted vault and grabbed a few of the remaining money coin sacks that had intentionally been left behind and someone on his hands and knees pulled away some discarded money baskets and shoved back an upended cart and let out a whistle and pointed to three whole baskets that had been obscured beneath the counter and another robber shook his masked head and whispered, “Government checks,” and the discovering robber shook his head back and said something like “Like hell, not all of them,” and he began piling packages into his sisal bag an
d Mike Geagan took the pry bar and tried his luck at opening the metal box he knew held $1,000,000 and couldn’t open it and tried again and looked around and saw the last of the filled sisal bags being dragged out and looked around further and saw that only two other robbers were in the room with him and felt that the room was effectively sacked and told whoever it was off to his right to go gather up all the unused rope and tape and sisal bags and then turned to the robber to his left and tapped the top of the money box and said, “Let’s roll her out of here,” and the robber wanted to know how they would get her down the steps out front and Mike said, “We’ll carry her down,” and the robber thought she’d be too heavy to carry and that the noise made bouncing her down the steps would be too loud for safety’s sake and Mike insisted she could be lifted and motioned to the other robber and they both bent down to see if they could lift the box and its million-dollar load.…

  And then the buzzer sounded.

  Every robber in the joint heard the buzzer. Every robber stopped what he was doing. Not one of them remembered seeing a buzzer that could be pressed anywhere.

  The robber standing with Mike walked over to the bound and gagged employees and knelt down beside one and said, “What does that mean?”

  There was a muddled reply.

  The robber realized the trouble, jerked the tape strip off the victim’s mouth and repeated the question.

  “It means somebody wants to get in,” head cashier Thomas B. Lloyd told him.

  “Well, how do we let him in?”

  “You go down to the end of the dispatch room and you press a button.”

  Jazz Maffie heard this as he came back into the vault room, motioned to the robber standing over the employee to follow and dashed out across the payroll wrapping room and out into the counting room.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  Maffie and the other robber legged it down the corridor and out through the door to the right, hurried across the unlit general office, cautiously opened the door just inside the rear hall to the right, cased into the corner guard booth and gazed out the side window into the garage. They noticed what no one else had noticed. Lights were burning in the garage. Not much light because the bulbs were of a low wattage, but enough to see a man standing at the door just this side of the protruding control room windows, waiting before the door that opened into the guard room.